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From: buck@graffiti.UUCP (Lester Buck)
Newsgroups: net.rumor
Subject: Re: Computer Horror Stories
Message-ID: <118@graffiti.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 14-Mar-86 23:56:57 EST
Article-I.D.: graffiti.118
Posted: Fri Mar 14 23:56:57 1986
Date-Received: Tue, 18-Mar-86 01:58:05 EST
References: <14700001@hplabsb.UUCP> <12121@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU> <551@tekcrl.UUCP> <2880@amdahl.UUCP>
Organization: Information Brokerage Network, Houston, TX
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This is a story I heard on the Spring '84 DECUS Magic Session tape.

A consultant got a desparate call from a large company which develops
dog food.  "Help. Our dogs are getting fat." he is told.  It turns out
they run a large kennel with automatic feeding stations run by a Vax
and the Vax was regularly crashing for reasons DEC couldn't figure out.

Sure enough, he showed up the first time just in the middle of a crash.
Pandemonium reigned as technicians ran around trying to reboot the system
and the dogs were going wild because whenever the system crashed, all the
food servers dumped the food.

Since they had had a PDP-11 recently with no problems, and they upgraded
the power to handle the Vax, he started looking around at the power system.
Sure enough, the cable went through one smart dog's cage. It had a 
broken sheath, so some simple Pavlovian conditioning had taught this dog
that whenever he relieved himself on that one spot, he was fed.
They replaced the cable and everything has worked fine since.

I'm not sure I believe this, but it makes for a hilarious story on tape.

A. Lester Buck
ihnp4!shell!graffiti!buck